Best of Rochester

Best Local Actress

In her decades-long acting career, Debbie Olson has made more than her fair share of sacrifices in the name of art. The Rochester native dyed her hair a scary shade of platinum blonde in order to play a character in “Blood Brothers” who wants to be like Marilyn Monroe. She had countless bowls of whipped cream—designed to represent crab dip—dumped over her head for a recent role in “Laughingstock.” And, most dramatically, she broke her hand onstage once when a choreographed fight went awry during a performance of “The Snow Queen.” “I must’ve nailed my partner in crime just right,” Olson says. Olson, who describes herself as “more of a character actor than an ingenue,” finished the performance and came right back for the next one, “with a little covering for my cast.”

Day job: Senior claims examiner for Mayo Clinic Health Solutions.

First time onstage: Olson performed as a caroler in Rochester Civic Theatre’s “A Christmas Carol” when she was a pre-teen. “I just remember wearing a fur coat and throwing a snowball. I was really into the costuming.”

A play to remember: The urge to act didn’t really take hold for Olson, however, until she saw “Tartuffe” at the Guthrie when she was a high-schooler at John Marshall. “I just remember being so captivated. My girlfriend said ‘Oh, you could do that.’ I remember how everyone [in the audience] was so involved. I thought it would be really neat to affect people like that.”

On playing a nun: Some of Olson’s best-known work was as Mother Superior in three “Nunsense” productions at the Civic Theatre. She also played a nun in “The Sound of Music.” “If I’m never a nun again, I won’t cry. I think I’ve been a nun five or six times and I’m not even Catholic.”
She’s acted in: The three different “Nunsense” productions, “Oliver,” “Inherit the Wind,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “Quilters,” “Wit,” “Arsenic & Old Lace,” “The Triangle Factory Fire Project,” and “Blood Brothers,” to name just a few.

Getting into character: Olson can’t pick a favorite character she’s played. “I feel blessed to have played such neat women, and even animals,” says Olson, who played a cow in “Quilters.”

Dream role: Mama Rose in “Gypsy.”

Acting idols: Rosalind Russell, Lucille Ball, Meryl Streep.
Onstage gaffes: Olson has forgotten her lines on stage, but has always recovered quickly. “I can BS my way out of pretty much anything. I’m pretty good at ad libbing,” she says. Minor missteps are common, she says. In a poignant moment during “Quilters,” Olson was talking about someone who committed suicide, but it came out “stuicide.” “I could feel the girls on stage trying not to laugh.”  

No end in sight: “The older I get, the more choosy I get about what I do,” Olson says. “Every once in awhile I say ‘Why am I doing this?’ But then you get that bug in you where you think ‘Oh, that [production] sounds like fun.’”